Learning by Osmosis
by Petrel
Summary: Daria unwittingly sends a fellow student down a much different path in life....


"Learning by Osmosis", by Petrel  
  
Summary : Daria unwittingly sends a fellow student down a much different   
path in life....  
  
Notes : MTV is a big powerful corporation. I'm just little ol' me,  
with nothing to take. They own it all. I was just inspired to  
write this, wondering about one of those faceless characters on  
Daria I've seen but about whom we know nothing. My inspiration  
for writing this was "Camp Concentration" by Thomas Disch.  
A really good read.  
  
Hope you like it!  
  
*****************************************  
  
Every high school has its cliques. We pretend not to notice them, even  
claim that they don't exist, but since human beings have a tendency to  
stereotype, they are there and people are put into cliques justly or  
unjustly. There are the brains, and the jocks, and the applepolishers,  
and the fashion queens, and the goths, and the goal of most is to make  
it out of school alive by 3 PM or so and spend the rest of the day   
escaping the reality of the past day and the next.  
  
Annissa Martz was a nobody. It was one of the catch-all cliques, the other  
being "weirdo". She was always known as "Ann", whenever anyone bothered  
to remember her name. She would have answered to almost anything feminine  
if it made someone's life convenient. Weighing over 180 pounds, she certainly  
wasn't a jock, and cruised through school on a straight C-minus average.  
She participated in no activities and was not asked. Normally, nobodies  
were at the bottom of the pecking order, until Ann finally found her niche  
and her refuge.  
  
Music.  
  
Ann was never seen without her walkman. It remained at her side, and after  
five years and two suspensions, the faculty had finally given up removing  
it from her head. She promised to listen to the lectures, and remain  
quiet, which she did most of the time. Whenever Barch or DeMartino began  
a windup or whenever O'Neill began a long, sleep-inducing inspirational  
moment, she pushed the "PLAY" button and for fifteen or twenty seconds  
treated herself to The Smiths, Tori Amos, Morrissey, The Cure, Siouxsie,  
and briefly escaped the prison that was both her body and Lawndale High  
School. Listening to "weird music" ensured her outcast status : no one  
would ask to borrow CDs. Except maybe Andrea, who had a habit of forgetting  
to return them.  
  
With that, Ann faded into the background. Aside from hating Lawndale,  
her body, her life, and everyone in the human race, one might say she  
was well adjusted.  
  
A lone thought crossed her mind..."December". Six more months of this  
and she was barely passing history. Mr. D. could be counted on for a  
bit of amusement, except when he called on her, and he never failed to  
do so. "Perhaps you're listening to a TUNE about how to AVOID unemployment  
and FAILURE, Ms. Martz, which is what you'll be FACING if you don't PAY  
ATTENTION and PULL YOUR GRADES UP!!" Each DeMartino moment was like a  
hammer through her eye.  
  
Third period had already began. Five minutes. No DeMartino. The class  
began to chatter. Kevin was already goofing off for the benefit of the  
other football players. Daria Morgendorffer and her friend Jane were  
talking to Jodie, the class brown noser. Andrea was drawing something,  
undoubtedly obscene.  
  
Six minutes. Still no "Mr. D." Time to put Tori Amos and the Choirgirl  
Hotel on.  
  
Ann clicked the CD on, but instead of Tori whining about a raspberry  
swirl, Tori sounded as if she was not quite awake and had developed  
an unnatural baritone since she last heard her. Uh oh, she thought.  
Batteries are dying.  
  
With practiced precision, she reached into her left jacket pocket for  
a new pack of batteries (the batteries shared space with M&Ms or whatever  
she brought to snack on). She could open a battery packet, one handed,  
without even looking.  
  
There were M&Ms, but no batteries. "Dammit", she thought, "where are my  
batteries?" Did someone steal them? It could have happened. They played  
jokes on her like that. One time, someone hung a donkey's tail made out  
of the wire from a wire-bound notebook onto her belt loop. Stupid stuff  
like that, the kind of jokes that Sandi Griffin would play. Immediately,  
she created and reviewed a list of suspects -- she was sure she had the  
batteries this morning.  
  
The hope that Tori could somehow make it to the end of the album faded away.  
The familiar "01" light wasn't on. There was no power, the batteries were  
finally and irrevocably dead. Without replacements, she would have to spend  
the entire day without her music fix.  
  
What to do? Her left hand almost reached up to take the headphones off,  
but she stopped herself. Taking off the headphones would mean that she could  
no longer feign ignorance to the comments about her and around her. For her  
own protection, she kept her headphones on, and pretended to listen to something  
not of the petty Lawndale universe.  
  
Jodie continued her conversation. "I can't see how you can be an atheist."  
  
Ann's ears perked up from behind the headphones. Her mother and father  
were always bitching about how she should be going to church. She still liked  
God and Jesus and all that, just not *that* much. She wanted to meet Him  
on her own terms, not on someone else's. She just wasn't churchy.  
  
"I never said I was," said Daria. "You're jumping to conclusions. I only  
said that there is no convincing argument for the existence of God."  
  
Ann thought, *you'll go to Hell for thinking that, Daria*. The thought  
of the sourpussed, snotty Daria Morgendorffer burning for an eternity in the  
pits of Hell almost caused a smile to cross Ann's face. She hated Daria  
for her grades and her pissy attitude, as if she were better than  
everybody else.  
  
"What do you think, Jane?", said Jodie. "Do you agree?"  
  
"Don't wanna get involved," said the art chick. "The only God I worship is  
'Bob'."  
  
"Praise his bleeding head," added Daria.  
  
*Good*, thought Ann. *Both of them would go to Hell*. She tried not to think  
about the fact that she would probably go there herself.  
  
"Seriously, Daria," said Jodie, "look at the world around you. Think about  
the brain. Think about the nervous system. Scientists have studied the  
organs of the human body for years. Nothing created by man has ever  
equaled their complexity. Think about how spectacular and special human  
life is."  
  
Daria (and Ann) listened, while Jane busied herself in something, anything  
else. Jodie continued. "For example, think about the position of Earth  
in the solar system. A little closer to the sun, and we'd burn. A little  
further away, and we'd freeze. If you claim that there is no argument  
for the existence of God, I say that you just need to look around you.  
Can you tell me that all of these parts could work together without some  
higher force putting them together. One part out of place, and the whole  
thing falls apart. But all the parts are in place. Could they have come  
together by chance? Between you and me, Daria, I think someone put them  
there. Someone bigger than either of us."  
  
*Right on*, thought Ann, *you tell them*. Daria was quiet for a moment.  
Ann was glad that Jodie had finally done the impossible. She had shut  
Daria Morgendorffer up. *You shouldn't go messing with God*, thought  
Ann, sort of happy her batteries had failed so that she could see this  
moment.  
  
"All right, Jodie," answered Daria, "explain the appendix."  
  
"What?", asked Jodie.  
  
"Explain the appendix. Explain tonsils. Tell me what functions *those*  
serve in the human body."  
  
"We've evolved beyond them," said Jodie. Ann listened intently, waiting  
for Jodie to strike back, clearly taking sides in the argument.  
  
"Explain why the mammoth elephants are dead. Or the sabertooths. Or the  
dinosaurs, or the tribolites. If everything is engineered so perfectly,  
why did entire species have to die? Explain AIDS. Explain the Black  
Death, and the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918. Explain why women die in  
childbirth because their hips aren't wide enough. I don't know. You  
see a lot of wonder, but all I see is one big mess."  
  
"Hmmph," said Jodie, not impressed.  
  
"If you're making out God to be some great designer of the universe,"  
said Daria, "then explain why He's done such a crappy job. There's  
no evidence of intelligent creation, *anywhere*." Daria fired her  
parting shot. "Look at Kevin Thompson."  
  
The thought that Kevin Thompson could be the result of some intelligently  
planned design was what did it. Ann ran the thought through what little  
bits of half-assed theology and philosophy she had picked up from   
septugenarian Methodist Sunday School teachers and popular TV shows,  
but the final answer did not compute. *Wait a minute,* thought Ann,  
knowing what the end result of the calculations would be and wondering  
if she could say it.  
  
...*there is....no God?*  
  
No God. Ann fought against that proposition with what little weapons she  
possessed. But -- wait a minute -- Daria couldn't be -- YES!! It sounded  
like a trumpet. Daria Morgendorffer was right. There is *NO GOD*.  
No proof. None whatsoever!  
  
It was the first time she had ever thought about such things. Ann's spiritual  
life, such as it was, was a house built from rotting, second-hand wood  
and one kick against the foundation by the large boot of Daria Morgendorffer  
send the whole thing crashing down. It was almost like recovering from  
electroshock therapy. A new world, perhaps a frightening world, but one  
more in line with her expectations had opened up. Now *everything* was  
called into question. Her parents and their lukewarm religiousity every  
Sunday. All the moral crap they tried to fill her with in school. All  
the fear she had of going to Hell if she did something wrong. All of it  
was burning up and the vacuum was rushing in, demanding to be filled.  
  
Jane told Jodie and Daria a story she had heard about Upchuck. The three  
forgot all about God and metaphysics. Class would continue, sooner or later.  
  
But Ann couldn't. She had entered the class a half-hearted, defensive  
Christian and exited a born-again, full-fledged atheist. It was the  
beginning of a long journey.  
  
********  
  
"Reverend?"  
  
The young couple entered Reverend Martz's study. The pastor of  
St. Luke's Episcopal was a large, genial woman, always with a smile  
on her face, a woman who could tell some interesting stories. She was  
the only pastor they knew who had once been a topless dancer, who  
was once a full-fledged member of the Revolutionary Workers Party  
and had served an eighteen-month prison sentence for trying to blow  
up a half-constructed Starbucks. The only pastor they knew who  
had returned from prison a reconstructed fundamentalist, who had  
married a young evangelist and divorced him six months later. A woman  
who had taken a long spiritual and philosophical journey and now  
treated herself much less seriously, more at peace with the world and  
more able to find humor in its madness.  
  
"Sorry! Come in!" She knew the two. They wanted to be married, but  
she refused to marry anyone without evaluating them first. Annissa knew  
that some people shouldn't be married, and she took that part of her  
vocation very seriously.  
  
The young man said, "Is that the newest Lawndale yearbook?"  
  
"This?", said the Reverend. "Oh, heavens no! This must be twenty years  
old! But if you tell anyone about that, I'll be forced to break a   
commandment, so mum's the word."  
  
"You went to Lawndale? My dad went there!," said the young woman.  
"His name is Jamie White. Do you know him?"  
  
The name didn't register at all. "Sorry, don't know him. What year?"  
  
"I think he graduated in...about 2001 or thereabouts...yes, that would  
be right. He got married after he graduated."  
  
"Hmm...sorry, still don't know him. I graduated in 2001 myself, but I  
tended to live in my own world then. I've forgotten just about everyone."  
*Except maybe Daria Morgendorffer*, Annissa told herself. *Wonder what  
she's up to now?* 


End file.
